Galley for traditional publishing
The manuscript an agent expects, out of the book you actually wrote.
Most writing tools are built around self-publishing on Amazon. If you're querying agents, you don't need a trim size yet. You need a manuscript in the standard format agents expect, and one that holds up when it's passed back and forth in Word with editors.
CHAPTER ONE
A Scandal in Bohemia
To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind.
I had seen little of Holmes lately. My marriage had drifted us away from each other. My own complete happiness, and the home-centred interests which rise up around the man who first finds himself master of his own establishment, were sufficient to absorb all my attention, while Holmes, who loathed every form of society with his whole Bohemian soul, remained in our lodgings in Baker Street, buried among his old books, and alternating from week to week between cocaine and ambition, the drowsiness of the drug, and the fierce energy of his own keen nature.
His manner was not effusive. It seldom was; but he was glad, I think, to see me. With hardly a word spoken, but with a kindly eye, he waved me to an armchair, threw across his case of cigars, and indicated a spirit case and a gasogene in the corner.
“Quite so! You have not observed. And yet you have seen. That is just my point. Now, I know that there are seventeen steps, because I have both seen and observed.”
Daily snapshot → now
1 day ago · 8,507 words then
A Scandal in Bohemia
To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him call her anything else.mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex.
His manner was not effusive. It seldom was; but he was glad, I think, to see me. With hardly a word spoken, but with a kindly eye, he waved me to an armchair.
“Quite so! You have not observed. And yet you have seen. That is just my point. Now, I know that there are sixteenseventeen steps, because I have both seen and observed.”
To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name.
He waved me to an armchair, threw across his case of cigars, and indicated a spirit case and a gasogene in the corner.
* * *
“Now, I know that there are seventeen steps, because I have both seen and observed.”
Version history
Daily snapshot → now
Every chapter keeps snapshots. Compare any of them with what you have now, and restore it if you want it back.
Why Galley works for this
Standard manuscript format, done properly
Times New Roman at 12pt, double-spaced, one-inch margins on US Letter, half-inch first-line indents, scene breaks marked with a hash, chapters starting about a third of the way down the page, your contact details top left, and a rounded word count top right. Agents expect it, so Galley gets it right.
Two versions, for two different jobs
The submission package is what you send when querying: a cover page, your synopsis, your bio and the opening chapters, in the order agents ask for them. The full manuscript is the whole book with a Surname / Title / page header on every page, which is what an editor needs for line editing.
You still write on a real page
The manuscript format is only applied when you export. While you write, your book keeps its own typeface and page layout, so you don't have to draft in double-spaced Times New Roman.
Word comments come back attached
Editors and agents work in Word. You export a DOCX and get it back with tracked changes and comments. Most writing tools import the changes but lose the comments, which are often the most useful part. Galley imports the comments too and attaches each one to the sentence it was about.
Beta readers, and knowing whose copy leaked
Beta drafts export a separate file for each reader, with their name watermarked on every page. If an unpublished copy ever turns up somewhere it shouldn't, you'll know whose it was.
The draft you sent stays the draft you sent
Querying takes a long time, and you'll probably keep editing while you wait. Draft milestones let you save and name a version, so you can still open "the one I sent in March" when an agent replies in November. Every chapter also keeps daily snapshots you can compare and restore, and deleted work stays in the bin for 30 days.
A style sheet before a copyeditor asks for one
The story bible has a style sheet for your own spelling rules, which you can fill in while you draft instead of working them out from a finished book. It helps when an editor asks why "grey" is spelled "gray" in chapter twelve.
Nothing in it is AI, and you can say so
Galley doesn't generate, suggest or rewrite anything, and your book isn't used to train anything. More agent forms and publishing contracts now ask you to confirm the work is your own, and you can.
From first draft to the finished files
Each step links to the bit of the docs that explains it.
| Stage | What Galley does | Read on |
|---|---|---|
| Draft it | On a real page, with characters and places one @ away so you never misspell your own protagonist. | The writing room |
| Keep the bible | Characters, aliases, timeline, world-building, research clippings, and the style sheet. | The story bible |
| Revise before you query | Check filler words, names spelled two ways, mixed spelling, and chapter pacing. | Revision |
| Send it to readers | Watermarked beta drafts, one per reader, or a proofreading PDF at two pages a sheet for the ones who print it. | Drafts for other people |
| Build the submission | Cover page, synopsis, bio and opening chapters in standard manuscript format, made from the book. | The submission package |
| Send the full manuscript | The whole book in the same format, with the header an editor expects on every page. | Every export format |
| Take the edits back | Import the edited DOCX. The changes come in, and so do the margin comments, attached to the sentences they were about. | Importing a manuscript |
| Mark what you sent | Save a named draft milestone for each round of submissions, so you know which version went to whom. | Version history |
| And if it doesn’t sell | The print PDF and the EPUB are in the same export menu, if you decide to publish it yourself. | The toolkit |
The features you’ll use most
Everything in Galley comes at one price. These are the ones you’ll spend the most time in.
- Manuscript format Double-spaced Shunn format for agents and editors
- Submission package Your manuscript, synopsis and bio, in the order agents ask for
- Share a copy A file or a link for each reader, with their name on it
- Word & Markdown For editors and backups
- Proofreading PDF Two pages per sheet, for marking up on paper
- Import your draft Bring in a .docx, .md or .txt and it’s split into chapters
- Inline comments Notes in the margin that you can resolve
- Draft milestones Mark a draft done, then see which chapters changed since
- Version history Daily snapshots per chapter, restore any of them
- Style sheet Your own spelling and hyphenation rules
- Consistency sweep Flags mixed spellings, hyphens, quotes and dashes
- No AI on your words Nothing writes or suggests text, and no AI is trained on your book
The full inventory is longer than this. There’s no higher tier to hold anything back for.
Where Galley is the wrong tool
Your plotting lives on a corkboard
If you plot with index cards and beat sheets, Scrivener is much better at that. Galley has a timeline, per-chapter synopses and chapter stages. Scrivener's compile settings are also more flexible than Galley's exports, so if you've already set up a compile format you like, Galley will feel limited.
You write in the same document as someone else
Galley doesn't support real-time co-writing. Google Docs is better for that.
You need to work fully offline today
Scrivener has worked offline for twenty years. Galley can write offline too, but it's still in Beta, and the offline writing page lists what works so far.
Questions
I’m querying agents. Does it do standard manuscript format?
Yes, done properly. Times New Roman at 12pt, double-spaced, one-inch margins, half-inch first-line indents, hash scene breaks, chapters opening a third of the way down, contact details and an approximate word count on the title page. Two versions come out of it: the full manuscript, carrying a Surname / Title / page running header for an editor about to line-edit you, and a submission package with your synopsis, bio and opening chapters in the order agents ask for them. Your book keeps its real page and its real typeface while you write. The submission copy is generated from it.
How do I get drafts to beta readers and my editor?
Share a copy makes one copy per reader, with that reader's name watermarked on every page, so if a copy turns up somewhere you know whose it was. Send it as an EPUB or a PDF they keep, or as a link that opens the book in a reader. A link takes a password and an expiry date, and you can turn it off after. Editors get a Word file, or a proofreading PDF at two pages a sheet if they're the sort who prints it and reaches for a red pen. When the edited Word document comes back, Galley imports the edits and the margin comments, each one anchored to the prose it was pointing at. Most tools import the edits and silently drop the comments, which is usually the half you paid for.
Can I do both, query agents and self-publish?
Yes, and a lot of people end up doing exactly that. It's one book either way, so there's no migration between the two paths: the manuscript export, the print PDF and the EPUB all sit in the same menu. Draft milestones let you mark and name a version, so "the draft I sent my agent" stays something you can open a year later when she finally replies and asks whether much has changed.